Every subcontractor's estimating habit is built around the trade sections — Division 03 if you pour, 09 if you finish, 26 if you wire. It's where the measurable work lives, so it's where the attention goes. But the tender's general requirements apply to every trade on the job, and they're written by someone whose incentive is to push cost and risk downward. Skim Division 01 and you haven't priced the job — you've priced the drawings.
These seven clause families are the recurring offenders: each is common, each is enforceable, and each costs real money that no unit rate contains. Section numbers vary by spec, so hunt by topic, not by code.
1. Temporary facilities and services
The headline questions: who supplies temporary power, heat, water, and light — and who pays for consumption? A clause making each trade responsible for its own temporary heat turns a January pour or a winter board-and-tape schedule into a heating scope with fuel, hoarding, and monitoring attached. The companion trap is hoisting: if craneage and material handling aren't provided by the GC, your material movements on a high-rise are either a crane-share cost or a lot of labour walking stairs.
- What to carry: winter protection as its own line when the schedule crosses cold months; a hoisting allowance or an explicit qualification that hoisting is by others.
2. Cleaning and waste removal
Almost every Division 01 makes each trade responsible for daily cleanup of its own debris, and many add: to a GC-supplied bin — or worse, to each trade's own bins. Drywall, demolition and concrete cutting generate volume; a job-length bin obligation is a monthly cost. Watch also for "final clean" language that reaches beyond your own work.
- What to carry: labour hours per week for cleanup across the schedule's duration — not a token allowance; bins if the clause puts them on you.
3. Closeout submittals
As-built drawings, O&M manuals, extended warranties, training sessions, spare materials ("attic stock"). None of it is physical work, all of it is hours — and the clause with teeth is the one tying release of holdback/final payment to complete closeout documentation. A 2% attic-stock requirement on a finishes trade is inventory you're buying and warehousing.
- What to carry: office hours for documentation; the actual cost of spare stock; warranty reserve if the extended term exceeds your suppliers'.
4. Cutting and patching
The default rule in most general requirements: whoever cuts, patches — and whoever cuts late, pays. If your work penetrates rated assemblies, the firestopping and the patch-back to match existing finishes may both be yours. The expensive version is sequencing-driven: work installed out of sequence that forces cutting into finished surfaces lands on the trade that was late, and "late" is an argument you want no part of.
- What to carry: patching allowance where your trade routinely penetrates; a qualification that cutting/patching of others' work is excluded.
5. Testing, inspection, and the failed-test clause
The owner typically pays for independent testing — until a test fails. The standard clause makes re-testing after a failure the failing trade's cost, and some go further: standby time when your work wasn't ready for a scheduled inspection. On concrete, a failed cylinder cascades into coring, engineering review, and worst case, removal — the retest clause is the cheap part.
- What to carry: nothing, if your QC is real — but know the clause exists, and never sign a version that makes you pay for passing tests without pricing it.
6. Scheduling, sequencing, and mobilizations
Look for: work "in phases as directed," multiple mobilizations "at no additional cost," off-hours or occupied-facility work, and coordination-meeting attendance requirements. A renovation phased around an operating facility can double your effective mobilization count, and a weekly two-hour site meeting across a 60-week schedule is 120 supervisory hours the meeting clause just quietly billed you.
- What to carry: mobilizations at a realistic count, priced; premium time where the phasing implies it; supervision hours that match the meeting and coordination regime.
7. Temporary protection
Two directions, both costly. Protecting your finished work until acceptance — a polished slab under following trades' traffic needs covering, and the covering has a price. And protecting adjacent work while you operate — dust partitions, floor protection under lifts and material routes. The clause usually says damage to unprotected work is repaired at the damaging trade's cost, which makes the protection the cheaper of the two options.
- What to carry: protection materials and the labour to place, maintain and remove them — scaled to schedule duration, since protection isn't a one-time cost.
The twenty-minute Division 01 pass
You don't need to read the division like a novel. Hunt these topics, in this order, and note the page for each hit:
| Hunt for | The money question |
|---|---|
| Temporary services | Who supplies, who pays consumption, is heat mine in winter? |
| Hoisting / material handling | Crane by others, crane-share, or mine? |
| Cleaning | Daily? Own bins? Final clean reach? |
| Closeout | What documents gate my holdback? Attic stock %? |
| Cutting & patching | Do my penetrations make patching mine? |
| Testing | Failed-test and standby cost allocation |
| Phasing / mobilizations | How many mobilizations does the phasing actually imply? |
| Meetings / supervision | Hours per week × schedule weeks |
| Protection | Mine until acceptance? Adjacent work while I operate? |
Then the discipline that makes the pass worth doing: every hit gets a line in your bid — a price, an allowance, or a written qualification. A Division 01 obligation you noticed but didn't carry anywhere is a donation. And keep the page numbers: three months into the job, "Section 01, page 14" ends arguments that "I'm sure it said somewhere" starts.